Friends Don't Let Friends Eulogize Drunk
by smithereen
Summary: The funeral is on a Tuesday, and Rusty Venture is drunk.


**Friends Don't Let Friends Eulogize Drunk**

*****

The funeral is on a Tuesday. All the banks and post offices are closed. All the flags are at half-mast. The TV reporters are talking about the end of an era, and mourners clog the streets when the motorcade makes its way from the church to the graveyard. The entire nation is submerged in somber shock and despair.

And Rusty Venture is drunk.

Really, really drunk.

He has one very important goal for the day: to not throw up on the President of the United States.

The President of the United States, who is sitting across from him in the limo telling him the country is counting on him. Telling him they have every confidence. That they look forward to working with him closely. That they can't wait to see what he has in store. He can feel the walls closing in. The bile rising in his throat.

And then he has one very important goal for the day: to not throw up on the President of the United States twice.

*

The cemetery is crawling with his dad's old allies and enemies. Many of them with black armbands over their body armor and/or rubber suits and/or various forms of unitard-based clothing. One young guy who looks like he's made out of half a truck is wearing an incongruous tie that dangles weirdly over the shiny metal grill in the middle of his chest. The Amazing Neon has extinguished all his lights, except one lurid red one in the vicinity of his heart. The Black Cat looks the same as always, one of the benefits of building your costume around basic black. Also? Very slimming. But it shows lint like you wouldn't believe.

Security is everywhere. His personal guards close ranks as he steps out of the limo, but he doubts anyone will start anything here. Everyone respects his dad. Even the people who've spent their whole lives trying to destroy him. Especially them.

"Dude, it's David Bowie," Pete White whispers in his ear, motioning with his umbrella in the direction of a slim figure smoking under one of the trees. Rusty tries to get his eyes to focus, but one of them is still bandaged from the beating his roommate gave him a week ago and the other one does not know how to handle its liquor. He starts to feel like throwing up again.

"Excuse me," he snaps, mostly because he's annoyed he's missing David Bowie. "But this is a funeral not a fan club."

"Dude, it's Colonel Horace Gentleman!" White whispers back. "I think he's coming over!"

"You're seriously going to geek out over Colonel Gentlemen now?" Rusty says. "I mean... Why?"

"I don't know, Rust. He always looks so dapper."

Rusty tries to roll his eyes, but it makes everything start to spin a lot more than it normally would. He settles for, "You're fruitier than a nutcake, you know that right?"

"Ah, young Master Rusty," Colonel Horace Gentleman says. "How are you holding up on this tragic day?"

"Actually it's T.S. now, sir."

White elbows him in the ribs, which he takes to be some kind of hint about not making a scene at something as serious as a funeral over something as silly as a name. But it's his name, dammit! Or it will be if people will ever listen to him and start calling him by it.

"Ah, of course. I forget you're all grown up now. Time does fly, eh?"

"Like a kid with a jetpack, sir."

Kano stands close behind the Colonel, his bald head bowed. He reaches out with one of his gigantic arms and opens his hand to reveal a delicately folded paper lily. Rusty takes it and considers putting it in his pocket before changing his mind and cradling it awkwardly in his hand.

"Thanks."

Otto looks strange in a black suit and tie, his gills crushed by the tight collar. "I never thought he would go like this. He was still so young."

"Not everyone has your extended lifespan, Otto," Gentleman says. "But I won't pretend I wasn't surprised to hear the news myself."

The Action Man chuckles softly. He has his hat off, and Rusty is surprised to see how grey his hair has gotten. He twists his hat in his hands as he says, "Just think how many of these bastards he cheated by having that heart attack. They would have given anything to be the one to bump him off. But he showed them-"

"Yeah, right," Rusty blurts. "He showed them by dying. Great job, dad. Way to prove a point."

The Action Man coughs, looking a little crest-fallen. "Sorry, I didn't mean..."

White elbows him again, and he takes it to mean can he please stop being a disrespectful jackass to men that have practically raised him. And quite frankly he doesn't think he can. He can't look at them without seeing his dad. They can't look at him without seeing a stupid kid. And it pisses him off. He knows he's being horrible to what is basically the only family he has left, and he also knows he's not going to be able to stop trying to hurt them. So probably he should go. "Look, I'll see you at the reception," Rusty says. "I need to go do...things with...people."

"Of course, of course," Gentleman says. "We'll speak with you then. And we'll come by the house later this week to discuss the future of Team Venture."

"What future?" Rusty snaps. He tries to take an angry step forward, but White has hold of his jacket, and his legs are making decisions independent from his brain. Decisions to not move, but maybe buckle at the knees a little bit. "What's Team Venture without Dr. Venture? You can keep doing your tired schtick I guess, but I don't really see the point."

"The Venture name isn't dead," Colonel Gentleman argues, planting his cane in the soft earth. "It lives in you. You are your father's son, we all-"

"I'm not interested in continuing your stupid little club," Rusty interrupts, and turns abruptly away from their polite desperation. He can't stand to see how much they need him to be what his dad was. To be his dad. He crushes the paper lily in his fist, and tries to keep from staggering as he walks away.

"It was nice to meet you, sirs," White says. "Sir. An honor."

"Don't be such a kiss ass," he sneers, heading in the general direction of the coffin. Or what he thinks is the general direction of the coffin until White catches up to him, and guides him over a little to the left.

*

The minister asks him to come up and say a few words, and he's frozen trying to figure out how he's supposed to get from where he's standing, or to be perfectly accurate leaning heavily on White, over to the lectern. Getting drunk was perhaps not the best idea. Of course, he's also so drunk he mostly doesn't even care when he trips over someone's feet and racks himself on a giant arrangement of flowers.

Standing in front of the crowd, he hesitates. He knew he was going to have to give a speech. He even wrote one out. Started to. But it's in his other coat, and it was only four scratched out sentences long anyway. At least he's so drunk he doesn't really care anymore what he says or if it's an embarrassment. When he starts to speak, he's pleasantly surprised to realize that his voice doesn't slur or shake. He launches into it, and by the time he starts listening to what he's saying it's too late to take it back anyway.

"My dad is dead," he says. "It's weird to say it. It doesn't seem real. Even when you say it. Dead. Jonas Venture is dead. Dead. Dead. Dad. Dead. Dad. Dead."

Later the papers will print the entire speech with headlines screaming "DR. VENTURE'S SON DRIVEN MAD BY GRIEF" and "IS THIS THE FUTURE OF SUPERSCIENCE?" But right now, he's just talking.

"It sounds weird, right? And it sucks. For you. All you people who built your lives around him. Makes you look pretty dumb right about now. I guess you all thought the great one would never let you down, that the game would keep going forever and ever like Monopoly until someone throws the gameboard in the fireplace because the banker is a dirty cheater." He wonders briefly why he's talking about Monopoly, but presses on.

"Anyway, it's over. Whether you're the little dog or the thimble or the iron. He always used to make me be the iron, which is the lamest piece of all, because he said something about steam or I don't know... The wrinkles are a metaphor for the brain or genius or something..." He trails off. "But the point..." He pauses, wobbling a little, his eyes drooping. Man, he's really tired all of a sudden. Dizzy and really tired.

White suddenly coughs in his ear, a steadying hand on his elbow. "The point!" he continues, coming fully awake. "Is he always wins. Except for he's dead. So now you have to figure out what the hell you are without him. And I can tell you right now that most of you aren't anything without him. Bunch of fully grown so-called adults running around dressed up like complete-"

White starts to tug at his arm, and he turns to snap, "I'm speaking here!" He tries to pull his arm away. "The gall of some people. At a funeral of all places!" For some reason it takes him about 5 seconds to blink. Well, probably it's because of how he's massively drunk, but it could be that his eyelids are in a self-contained time warp or something. Sometimes stuff like that happens.

He realizes just after he thinks it, that he may have said all of that out loud by accident. White is really pulling on his arm now, muscling up behind him. "Good luck getting a life, suckers!" he yells as White forces him out from behind the podium and hustles him away from the crowd. He eventually trips over maybe his own feet, but he's pretty sure there was a big tree root there a minute ago, and lands face first in the smell of fresh cut grass and rich, dark earth.

"Ow," he says, grabbing for his injured eye. "What the hell is your problem, man? Can you just mellow out!"

When he turns over onto his back, he's looking up at White's umbrella. Underneath its shade the albino is shaking his head all "tsk-tsking" like he's an 80 year old woman. An 80 year old really judgmental woman. "You threw up on the President and gave your own father the worst eulogy ever said in the entire history of talking. All in one day. Are you going for the dickhead world record or what there, fella?

"What are you, my mom?" He rolls over, covering his head with his arm before remembering that his face is still sore enough from the psycho roommate incident to hurt through this much drunk. "Oh, that's right. I don't have a mom."

"Look if you want to make a fool of yourself, nobody can stop you. But I'm trying to be a good friend here, pally. And believe me you do not make it easy."

"Just leave me alone."

"Fine. It's no skin off my nose if you want to try to crawl back to the limo without me."

"I think I can manage to get myself back to the car on my own thanks. I am an adult."

"That's debatable." The shade from White's umbrella disappears, and he watches the puffy clouds overhead spin for a while before pulling himself up to a sitting position. He's completely exhausted by the time he manages to get himself half vertical, so he puts his head down between his bent knees.

He feels someone sit down heavily next to him, and musters the energy to look. It's Crunch Beefblast. One of Jonas Venture's most persistent and dangerous enemies. Rusty must have been held hostage by the guy at least 57 times. Not counting the times he was unconscious for the duration.

"Hello, Rusty."

Crunch is one of those guys with massive muscles who always wears a tight tank top to be sure you see all of them. He's wearing a black tank top today with his ubiquitous "lightning fist" logo right in the middle. People always assume he's stupid because he looks like he spends all his time in the gym, but actually he spends all his time in the gym inventing deathrays and robotic ant armies while bench-pressing the basic equivalent of a Pinto. Truth is he thinks better when he's exercising, and the muscles are sort of a byproduct of his genius.

"T.S.," Rusty mutters stubbornly, despite the passing fear that he's about to get his kneecaps beefblasted.

He'd always kind of liked Crunch better than his dad's other major enemies. Some of those dicks would put him in really scary rat-infested dungeons or dunk him in vats filled with mutant spiders or try to brainwash him to kill the Pope or whatever other thing that made his childhood complete hell. But Crunch mostly wouldn't. Sure, there was that time he turned Rusty into a walking time bomb activated by eating chocolate. To this day, Rusty can't be around chocolate without having a panic attack. But sometimes Crunch would give him cookies or let him press invisible buttons in the cockpit of his rocket car. Rusty suspects now that there were no buttons. Who puts invisible buttons in a perfectly visible rocket car? Nobody, that's who. But at the time he'd believed it, and it had made him feel important.

"Sorry. T.S. I guess I haven't seen you since you've been off to college."

"It's no big deal, Mr. Beefblast," he says, and shakes the hand that's offered.

"How many times have I told you to call me Crunch," he says. "Mr. Beefblast was my father." His hand is enormous, and his grip is painfully tight.

They sit in silence for a while, which is a nice change from having people tell him over and over that they're sorry, or how much they loved his dad, or how much they're counting on him to be just like Jonas.

"Hard day," Crunch finally says.

"You could say that."

"Maybe I should go. You probably don't want to talk to one of the guys that was always trying to kill your dad right now."

Rusty waves it off. "It's alright. I know my dad respected you."

"And I him. He was truly a worthy adversary." Crunch chuckles. "Do you remember the time we were stranded on that island because your father sank my escape boat. Your father made those flares from banana peels to scare the natives-"

"-And then he built a jet-powered raft out of coconut trees."

"But he couldn't come up with anything better to eat than those roasted bats. You were the one who had to point out we were surrounded by bananas."

They both laugh.

"I'd forgotten that I invented the banana shish-ka-bob."

"You always were a smart boy."

Rusty smiles, and nods. "I always was." He keeps nodding.

"So many memories, Rusty. So many good times. I always thought of you as a kind of nephew."

"I did have my own room in your compound." Rusty doesn't bother correcting him on the name thing a second time. It's nice to have someone actually talking to him. Someone who sees him as something other than just a crappier copy of his dad. Someone who doesn't need him to be anything but who he is. Whoever that is.

They laugh again.

"I always knew you were headed for great things."

And why not? Rusty smiles wider, his back straightening. This is exactly what he's needed to hear. To remind him that maybe this doesn't have to be a disaster. He doesn't have to be a disaster. He let himself get caught up and forgot that he has his own greatness. He's Rusty Venture after all. What kid didn't want to be him? Who's had more adventures than him? Who's sexier, more intelligent, more fantastic? Nobody, that's who. And his whole life is ahead of him, just waiting for-

Crunch claps him on the back, and Rusty struggles to stay upright under the weight of that massive hand. "You're a lot like him, you know."

"I appreciate that, sir." And he's surprised to find he actually does appreciate it. When Crunch says it, it doesn't chafe and it doesn't feel like a lie someone is desperate to believe. When Crunch says it, it almost feels true.

Crunch hands him one of his business cards. They look the same after all this time, super thin steel with the lightening fist logo in the middle. Rusty used to keep a stack of them in his room before his dad melted them down to use in making some new robot or whatever.

"I'll need a new arch, Rusty. I'd like to keep it in the family."

"Oh." Of course. He pops like an overly-filled balloon of stupidity. So stupid. So damn stupid to think this was any different.

And then he's so angry he can't hear anything but roaring in his ears as he drags himself to his feet. "I'd rather spend my life being chased by a deranged kangaroo than a washed up has-been like you," he yells. The Hopping Horror is technically retired, but that's not the point. "You're NOTHING without my father!"

Crunch is just watching him with this infuriating bemused pity, and Rusty can't stop himself as he aims a kick at the big guy's crotch. But his depth perception is way off with only one working eye, and it not working very hard. His kick glances harmlessly off a massive shin, leaving his toes throbbing. He just knows Crunch is laughing at him, but he can't hear it over his own rage. "You might as well have died with him for all the use you are without him! Get it through your thick head, you brainless quadricep! He's not coming back!"

He's running, sort of falling, but managing not to lose his feet completely, and knocking over flowers and people and screaming at the top of his lungs not even at Crunch or any of them anymore but at his dad. "This is my time, dad! You were never a good father! You just got in my way. I'm not even sorry you're gone!" But of course, that's not true. The truth is as long as his dad was alive, being his dad, he had a chance to maybe be something else. Something different. He hasn't figured out what that is yet, and now he knows he never will. Now he'll never be free. "Why couldn't you just wait? Until I knew what... Until I knew who..."

The ground drops out from under him, and he falls hard, the air going out of his lungs in a rush. He looks down at the polished wood of the coffin below him, then up past the long rise of four walls of dirt to those big white clouds still wheeling in the sky above. He gasps for a breath. His hands move weakly, brushing through dirt and over slick shiny wood.

For a moment it's quiet. It's cool down here, and everything seems far away. It's just him and the clouds and the dirt.

And his dad.

His security people appear on the edges of the hole, shouting orders at each other and the freaked out crowd. In a few moments they're efficiently pulling him out, up. His hand trails against the smooth wood one more time as the cool silence retreats.

Goodbye, dad.

And then his guards have him, and they're rushing him back toward the limo before he makes even more of a spectacle of himself. One of them carries him because his legs won't hold him anymore, and he can see the flash bulbs popping. Those pictures will be spread, not just in newspapers across the world, but more specifically in Xerox copies all across campus for the next two years. Basically destroying any chance of him having sex with anyone. Like EVER. But he's not worried about that right now because he's still drunk, really drunk, drunk enough to sit back and wait patiently for the grey around the edges of his vision to close in. Until it's all black. Until he's not Rusty Venture or T.S. Venture or Jonas Venture's son or anything at all anymore.

On the edge of sweet oblivion there's one thought that clings tenacious as he slips under.

Thank God for booze.

End


End file.
